As you may have heard, we'll be moving all AdWords app install campaigns to Universal App Campaigns (UAC) later this year.

With UAC, you can reach the right people across all of Google’s largest properties like Google Search, Google Play, YouTube and the Google Display Network — all from one campaign. Marketers who are already using UAC to optimize for in-app actions are seeing 140% more conversions per dollar than other Google app promotion products.1

Over the last few weeks, we’ve discussed how to steer performance for UAC using goals and your creative assets. In today’s post, we’ll talk about another very important topic when it comes to UAC — optimizing for the right in-app action.

This is important if you want to find app users who will do something specific after they’ve installed your app — whether that’s adding something to a wishlist for your shopping app, entering their frequent flier info to your traveler app or joining a group in your game.

First things first: take a look at what’s happening inside your app.

Track and send AdWords your in-app events

You wouldn’t stop measuring at the landing page of a website, so why would you stop at the install for a mobile app?

Each post-install event that you track and pass back to AdWords is a chance to learn more about how users engage with your app. The more we learn about your best app users, the easier it is to find more people like them. If you’re not sure what to track, look at this list of events by app category. Pick the one that’s most like your app and use it as a guide.

Let’s go back to our mobile game example: Before you start advertising your new mobile game, you pay a visit to the part of your office where the developer team sits. You kindly ask them to implement all the in-app events that apply to a gaming app — and you take some to discuss whether there are any other in-app events that are specific to your game.

Understand how users interact with your app

Once you’ve built up a user base, follow your users along their journey beyond the install. Create what’s called a “user funnel.” What are the key steps people take that lead to a purchase?

Example: You happen to sit next to your analytics team so you swivel your chair around to see if they have a moment to chat. You’d like to get their thoughts on a user funnel you’ve created for your game: installs, opens, completes tutorial, reaches level 5, joins group, reaches level 10, and then finally — makes a purchase. You and the team agree that this stuff is important to track so you schedule a regular meeting to analyze your game’s user funnel. Constant review of the metrics with your analytics team will help determine if your ads are bringing in the right users.

Example user funnel

Pick the right in-app action for your campaign

Now comes an important question: what do you want new app users to do in your app?
The answer will help determine the in-app action(s) you’ll pick as the optimization goal for UAC.

Example: During a one-on-one with your boss, you learn that driving in-app purchases is a priority for the business right now. You’re worried because you don’t see many in-app purchases happening per day (at least not yet), and you remember that UAC needs to optimize for an in-app action that happens at least 10 times a day.

You need to pick another in-app action that’s more common. You remember that your analytics team pointed out that users who join a group are very prone to making an in-app purchase 30 days later. And your data shows that this in-app action happens about 40 times a day so you set “Join a group” as the in-app action to optimize for.

Improve the user experience

What else can you do with the information you’ve collected? Review your user funnel. Identify where people are having trouble and see if you can help them out.

Example: During one of your meetings with the analytics team, you spot a big drop off at the tutorial section of the app. After your meeting, you rush downstairs to where your UX team sits. You work with the team to brainstorm a different way to teach beginners how to play your game. You want to see if this can improve how people get onboarded. If you’re successful, not only will you get better conversion rates for your ads — but you’ll create a better app experience for everyone!

Review these principles for more ideas on how to improve user experiences and conversions for your mobile app.

And don’t forget to check out our best practices guide to learn more about how to get the most from your Universal App Campaigns.

We look at our phones while we watch TV. We watch TV on our phones while we walk to work. We work on our laptops while we cast video to a set-top box. We spend the majority of our days connected, often via multiple devices—so much so that reach has become a commodity in advertising. And while reach is plentiful, attention is scarce.

Unless we’re talking about online video. Our latest research with Ipsos suggests people are 3x more likely to pay attention to online video ads vs. television ads.1 And within online video, people pay nearly 2x more attention to video ads on YouTube than they do on other social media.2 That’s because on YouTube, ads are more likely to be seen and people are more likely to arrive with intent to watch video—2X more likely than other online platforms.3 Today we’re sharing four new tools to help you capture the attention of your audience on YouTube:

1) Helping brands reach the right audiences

Intention is what has made search advertising so effective—the ability to quickly connect people looking for something they want or need, with a business that offers just that. Since January we’ve seen that what’s worked great for search works great for video as well. We found that campaigns that use intent-based audiences on mobile have 20% higher ad recall lift and 50% higher brand awareness lift relative to campaigns that only use demographic audiences.4

In order to help you deliver more relevant, useful ads on YouTube, we're expanding the ways you can use Google's broad ecosystem using Custom Affinity Audiences to reach people based on the kind of searches they do, or the kind of places and apps they like. That means an outdoor outfitter could use Custom Affinity audiences to potentially reach people who have searched for skis, spent time at ski resorts, or have downloaded a ski resort’s trail guide app.

2) Enabling custom creative at scale

Custom audiences are most valuable when paired with creative that is relevant to them. But personalization at scale can be difficult—new video creative is pricey and takes time to make.

We're launching Director Mix to simplify the process of creating different versions of the same creative tailored for each audience—you give us the building blocks of your video ad, like different voiceovers, background and copy, and our system will create thousands of versions to match your various audience segments.

Campbell’s Soup used Director Mix to create videos with clever copy based on the content people were about to watch. For instance if you clicked to watch clips from Orange is the New Black, you’d see a bumper asking “does your cooking make prison food seem good? We've got a soup for that.” And it worked: Campbell’s earned a 55% lift in sales and a 24% lift in ad recall with this campaign.

3) Telling a story that breaks free of a single unit

Similarly, we’re introducing Video Ad Sequencing to help you architect an ad experience that unfolds over time. This new feature in AdWords Labs lets you string together ad creative. You can pivot, you can react—and you can take consumers down a different path depending on which ads are working for them.

For instance, you could start with a fifteen-second TrueView ad to build awareness, continue with another, longer spot that communicates product attributes, then follow with a six-second bumper ad to keep top-of-mind and drive to purchase.

To drum up excitement for their new Assassin’s Creed game, Ubisoft cut four sequential six-second bumper ads, each with a critical element of their longer trailer. The brand used Affinity Audiences and Video Ad Sequencing to serve the ads to core E3 audiences. The campaign reached almost 15 million unique viewers and resulted in best-in-class lifts in awareness (+25%), search lift for ‘Assassin’s Creed’ (+224%) and search lift for the Assassin’s Creed trailer (+375%).

4) Measuring the impact – New ways to measure sales lift

And finally, you need a way to measure that you earned attention—and one way to do that is to look at its effect on offline sales.

From looking at the Nielsen MPA studies we’ve run to-date, we found that YouTube drove sales lift for the advertised product in 14 of 19 studies globally.5

We’ve also expanded our Oracle Datalogix ROI offering in the US to include six-second bumper ads so that brands can more comprehensively measure their YouTube campaigns. And we’ll continue working to deliver more solutions to complement our Nielsen MPA, Oracle DLX ROI, MMM and store visit offerings today, so you’ll have the measurement that works best for your business.

At YouTube, our aim is to show ads that are relevant and useful, so that instead of interrupting people’s viewing experiences, you’re enhancing them. This means matching what advertisers have to offer with what people are interested in—leading to a better YouTube experience backed up by comprehensive user controls. We hope you try out these new features as they become available, and hope to see you at Advertising Week.

When people want dedicated service or to get specific questions answered, they often pick up the phone to speak to a real person. Advertisers also drive more value from having these direct conversations with customers - on average, calls convert three times better than web clicks.

Hundreds of thousands of advertisers are already using call-only ads to generate more phone calls from mobile search. We are now introducing upgrades to call-only ads, starting with the launch of ad extensions. For the first time, you’ll be able to show ad extensions with call-only ads to promote more relevant information about your products and services, and give people more reasons to choose your business. In early experiments, we’ve found that implementing new extensions to call-only ads can improve clickthrough rate by 10% on average.

Introducing ad extensions for call-only ads

The following extensions for call-only ads will begin rolling out to all advertisers starting today:

Location extensions - highlight information about your nearby business locations for customers who want to visit your store in person.

Structured snippets - provide more specific details about your products and services using predefined headers like “Destinations” and “ Types”. For example, a rental car company might list various car classes like sedans, hybrids and SUVs.

Advertisers and agencies like Hertz, Vortex Industries and DexYP will be taking advantage of extensions to enhance their call-only ads with additional details and improve their visibility in search results.

“Calls help us effectively engage an increasingly mobile-first audience. They also drive better conversion rates compared to mobile text ads that take customers to our site. With new ad extensions for call-only ads, we hope to improve our CTR and call volume by taking up more real estate in search results, and showing customers additional relevant information like different car classes and ancillary product options.”- Jeremy Venlet, Director- Digital Operations and Performance, Hertz

“Choosing the right partner for commercial door repair is an important decision for any business, which is why we offer extensive service and support over the phone to help guide our customers to book on-site appointments with our expertly trained technicians. Partnering with our digital agency, YPM, Inc. we've made call-only campaigns a big part of our digital strategy since phone calls are so important to our business. Making ad extensions available with call-only ads is huge step forward because they'll allow us to go beyond the standard description text in ad copy to showcase our unique value propositions, such as prompt and efficient service, and a proven track record of delivering results for our customers.”- Stacey Muto, Marketing Director, Vortex Industries, Inc.

“DexYP partners with hundreds of thousands of local businesses to sustain and grow their customer base through online marketing channels. For many of these clients, driving leads and sales from phone calls is their top performance goal. For those that utilize Search Engine Marketing, call-only campaigns have been instrumental to helping these businesses generate more calls from mobile search, where more and more consumers are looking to connect with local businesses each year. We're incredibly excited to further improve our clients’ campaigns by adding new ad extensions. For example, the enhancement with location extensions will help further promote businesses who can assist customers over the phone, or at a nearby store location. Providing more relevant details in call-only ads will help them stand out more in search results and give users more reasons to call.”- Brandon Hulme, Sr. Product Manager, SEM Products and Platforms, DexYP

If you already have location, callout, or structured snippet extensions set up at the account-level, you don’t need to take any extra steps - the extensions will automatically be eligible to appear with your call-only ads. You can also tailor the messaging on your extensions at the campaign-level to help them work better with call-only ads. For example, highlight your fast call center service or offer a special discount when customers book an appointment over the phone for the same week.

To learn more about call-only ads, visit the Help Center and check out best practices for driving more calls to your business.

High quality product information is the foundation for connecting retailers with the most qualified customers on Google Shopping. Luckily, getting your product data in shape has never been easier with new Merchant Center tools. The new feeds experience and Opportunities are here just in time for you to win this holiday season.

Add or override product data with supplemental feeds

Previously, your product data could only be submitted in one primary feed. Now, supplemental feeds give you the flexibility of submitting and modifying your product data from multiple sources. You can use them to add or override attributes and values in your primary feed. For example:

Take your products global with a single multi-country feed

With Shopping available in 37 countries, don’t miss the opportunity to bring your products to new global customers. Simply add new countries with the same language to your primary feed and your prices will automatically show in the correct currency of the user. You can also reach new countries with different languages by applying Feed Rules to pull language-dependent values from a supplemental feed, like title and description. Now’s the time to add international expansion to your holiday plans.

Farfetch, a luxury fashion retailer, was able to quickly and easily extend their global footprint:

"The new feed management features in Merchant Center are an amazing solution. With the ability to create multi-country feeds, we easily launched Shopping campaigns in 6 more markets across 2 continents that now represent 29% of our traffic coming from Search in those countries. Our expansion would have been slower and more costly without this feature."- Martin Zirfas, Performance Marketing Executive

Modify your product data from the Content API with Feed Rules

The power of Feed Rules is now available for product data provided through the Content API. This means that you can easily make product updates without having to change your feed directly. For example, you can:

Apply custom labels based on other values

Complete shipping values based on product weight values

Append strong brand values to the beginning of product title values

Look out for additional updates as more functionality is added to Feed Rules.

Drive more clicks with Opportunities

Get a better idea of the potential results and effort needed to improve your product data or campaigns in the Opportunities tab. A card will appear if there’s enough information to surface an opportunity. From minor adjustments to important feed fixes, each card pulls in dynamic information to help you prioritize your resources and drive more clicks to your account. Initial cards will show on a limited basis and focus on improving your product data quality. But, this is only the beginning -- expect more opportunity types in the future. Check the Opportunities tab regularly as it's constantly working in the background to spot opportunities for you. And, make it a goal to address any high-value opportunities before heading into the holidays.

Keep your entire team informed of your Merchant Center account

The days of setting one primary contact and one technical contact are over. You can add multiple team members as either Admin or Standard users to your Merchant Center account. Each user can manage their own email preferences to opt into important news and notifications, including feed alerts, tips and best practices, and beta opportunities. You can also specify email-only users, who will receive communications but can’t log into your account. Before the holiday season, keep your team in the loop by adding them to your Merchant Center account.

Every business has its own unique set of reporting needs -- from determining which keywords drive the most website traffic to understanding the top performing mobile search ads over time. Having a consolidated, and comprehensive view of how your account is doing helps you spend less time creating reports, and more time identifying new opportunities. That's why over the next several weeks, we’re rolling out dashboards: a single place in AdWords* where you can bring together your most important reports and unearth insights about your business.

Create a customized view of your data

Dashboards gives you the flexibility to arrange your tables and charts in a way that’s most meaningful to you. You can add existing saved tables and charts to your dashboard, or create new ones on the spot. Curious about how your campaigns performed last summer? As you can see in the image above, you can quickly select any date range to see how your dashboard looked during that period.

Monitor performance in one place

You no longer have to navigate back and forth across different tabs and reports to get a comprehensive view of account performance. Instead, you now have all your important tables and charts in one place. You can easily see your impressions and CTRs by device right next to clicks by device as shown in the image above. This helps you to better understand the relationships between your data, and easily identify patterns and trends. There’s always a performance improvement opportunity waiting to be discovered, and dashboards allows you to quickly identify them and take action.

Collaborate and share with your team

If you work with multiple people on the same AdWords account, you can now build and review dashboards together. All dashboards in an account are conveniently listed in the Reports tab for seamless collaboration.

Create your first dashboard

To help get you started, we’ve provided a starter dashboard as an example of what’s possible. You can choose to build off of this dashboard, modify it to your needs, or delete it and create your own.

Creating dashboards in AdWords is simple. Just click Reports at the top of your account, click the Dashboards tab, and then + Dashboard.

We recently announced that we'll be moving all AdWords app install campaigns to Universal App Campaigns (UAC) later this year.

With UAC, you can reach the right people across all of Google’s largest properties like Google Search, Google Play, YouTube and the Google Display Network — all from one campaign. Marketers are already seeing positive results: those that optimize for in-app actions with UAC, on average, drive 140% more conversions per dollar than other Google app promotion products.1

A couple weeks ago, we discussed how to steer performance using goals. This week, we’ll show you how to get even more out of UAC with your creative assets — and how to improve performance using the recently launched Creative Asset Report.

Supply a healthy mix of creative assets

When creating a Universal App Campaign, you’ll upload creative assets which will become the “building blocks” that the campaign uses to create ads. Provide as many different kinds of text, image and video assets that align with your campaign goal (i.e., install volume or in-app actions). That way, UAC can create a relevant ad for every moment — in every possible format for every network.

Returning to our mobile game example: say you’re launching a new mobile game and trying to find everyone who wants to install your app. You’ve picked the campaign objective “Install volume” and set a target cost-per-install (CPI).

You want UAC to be able to create the best ad for any context, so you follow these best practices. For example, you remember that people hold their phones differently at times, so you include images in both landscape and portrait modes. You also upload videos of different duration and varying sizes (landscape, portrait, and square).

Get insights from the Creative Asset Report

We’re also excited to tell you about a new feature in UAC called the Creative Asset Report. This feature will let you understand what creative assets are working with your audience.

To access the report, just click on Campaigns and then Ad Assets.

Creative Asset Report for UAC

How is each asset evaluated? UAC uses hundreds of millions of signal combinations to pick one asset over another to create an ad that will best meet your goal. The performance grouping column in the Creative Asset Report will show either “Low”, “Good” or “Best” based on how often UAC picks an asset over another in your campaign. The report also has performance statistics (like conversions you’re tracking) so that you can check that the report’s performance ratings make sense.

Example: After running your campaign for a couple of days, you review your campaign’s Creative Asset Report. You notice the video assets in landscape mode that show a cinematic trailer for your game have been labeled as “Best.” You conclude that the trailer is getting people excited to download and try your game.

Optimize your asset mix using the Creative Asset Report

The Creative Asset Report also tells you how to optimize your asset mix to help UAC build better and better ads. Replace those rated as “Low” — and avoid removing any assets labeled with “Best,” “Good” or “Learning.”

Continuing with our example: Based on what you've learned from the report, you decide to replace any assets that have been rated as “Low” with even more thrilling cinematic video assets. You also notice that some of your assets still have the label “Learning.” You wait until there’s more data before taking action on those.

You want to feed UAC with a variety of creative assets — short and distinct text phrases, images in different sizes and orientation, and videos of varying length and orientation. Then as you discover which assets work better, you can replace “Low” performing assets to improve results over time.

Read our best practices guide to learn more about how to get the most from your Universal App Campaigns.

People expect to get things done in ‘one step’ or ‘one second’. Whether it’s finding the cheapest flight or ordering takeout, they demand fast and seamless mobile experiences. Did you know that for every second it takes for a retail website to load, conversions fall by up to 20%?1 In other words, if you’re sending your customers to slow-loading landing pages, you’re missing out on potential traffic, engagement and sales.

That’s where Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) can help. The open-source AMP Project aims to make the web faster and better for everyone. AMP pages are so fast, they appear to load instantly.

Earlier this year at Google Marketing Next, we introduced the ability to use fast-loading AMP landing pages for your search text ads. Starting in two weeks, we’ll be rolling this out to all AdWords advertisers globally.

Create a faster mobile ad experience with AMP landing pages

Get your mobile landing pages ready

We know that a better landing page experience results in a better ad experience—that’s why your landing page experience is such an important factor in how Google determines ad rank and pricing. By directing your search ad clicks to AMP landing pages, you can create the super-fast and delightful mobile experience that consumers expect. To get started, check out the AdWords Developer's Guide for AMP and learn how to create AMP landing pages.

Better landing page experiences drive better results

“AMP plus AdWords equals better conversion rates. These results also prove that even if your mobile site loads in four seconds, there’s scope for improvement. We’re absolutely confident about the benefits of AMP. We’re now building more and more AMP pages for most of our large and enterprise clients across all markets.”- Leif Grenevall, CEO, Adtraction Visits

“We've seen some good early results with AMP including improvements in engagement metrics, such as bounce rate, pages per session, and conversion rate. It’s clear that AMP’s faster loading times are driving a better user experience.” - Mike Carmody, Director of Paid Search, Saatva Mattress

Learn more

To see the percentage of clicks that go to invalid AMP pages, visit the "Landing Pages” page in the new AdWords experience. You can then work with your webmaster to ensure your landing pages comply with AMP guidelines and fix potential issues.

AMP landing pages for search text ads will be available for all mobile clicks—however, caching will initially only be available for the Chrome browser on Android. We’ll be rolling out support for additional mobile browsers in the coming weeks. Learn more in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Jon Diorio, Group Product Manager, AdWords1. SOASTA, The State of Online Retail Performance, April 2017

Whether it’s Diwali, Back to School, Christmas or Boxing Day, shoppers go online to purchase gifts globally. Here's how you can capture the attention of global shoppers with Shopping ads.

Here's how you can capture the attention of global shoppers with Shopping ads (based on 2017 dates)

Show Shopping ads everywhere you sell

This year, Shopping ads expanded to Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, New Zealand, Malaysia, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, the Philippines, United Arab Emirates and is now available in more than 30 countries. Use Shopping ads to reach new global customers, promote the products you sell and find better qualified leads by putting product images, price, and business name in front of people searching globally on Google.

Quickly expand your Shopping Campaigns to multilingual countries

We know one of the hardest challenges to expanding internationally is preparing your Shopping ads for a new language. But, did you know that you can submit your feeds in English in more than 21 countries? You can quickly expand to english speaking countries and to countries that support multiple languages, such as: Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Norway, Sweden and Taiwan.

Let us handle the currency conversion

Additionally, if you sell and ship products to multiple countries, but your website doesn’t have different product pages for each country’s currency, Google will automatically display your product prices in the local currency.

The holiday season is right around the corner - are your Shopping campaigns prepared to maximize increased shopping traffic? To help you get a head start identifying product data gaps and measuring your competitiveness in Shopping campaigns, we’re rolling out product status reporting and absolute top impression share.

Recover potentially lost Shopping traffic

If your Shopping campaign includes products not eligible to serve, that means disapprovals could be affecting the number of shopping results you show up on. See how many of your products are ready to serve by adding product status reporting to reporting charts in the ‘product’ and ‘product groups’ page. For example, a dip in ‘products ready to serve’ means your products are no longer eligible to participate in the auction.

Historical performance using Shopping product status

A new diagnostics report in the products page helps identify your aggregate product status, like products ‘ready to serve’ or ‘disapproved.’ Add performance columns like Clicks and Conversions to the report to prioritize where product updates can make the biggest impact to lost traffic. Click on each product status to see more details on how to fix the issues immediately. Alternatively, you can also view a full list of affected products directly in AdWords from the report. Develop a routine cadence to go through your Shopping campaigns and identify the top performing products not eligible for auction as products details frequently change, especially with the peak holiday season coming up.

Use the products tab (1) and diagnostics report(2) to see product status (3)

New metric shows how often your Shopping ad is in the top spot

Now that your products are eligible to serve, it’s time get them in front of shoppers. The left-most ad on mobile Shopping results get up to 3X more engagement from shoppers1; impressions in this position are called “absolute top” impressions. To see the percentage of time you’re showing in this top position, use absolute top impression share (Search abs. top IS column in AdWords).

Absolute top impression share is the number of “absolute top” impressions you received in Shopping results over the total times you could’ve been in the top impression.

For instance if you showed up as the “absolute top” in 8 search results but were eligible for 20 results, then your absolute top impression share would be 40%. If you have a high absolute top impression share, it means your products often appear at the top position in Google Shopping results. “Absolute top” impressions include ads from the Shopping carousel on Google search results and is available for both Shopping ads and Local Inventory ads.

The “absolute top” impression in mobile Search results

You can use this metric to optimize seasonal campaigns and get in front of more shoppers. Let’s say you sell kitchenware and plan to have a holiday sale on pots and pans. Separate out the sale products into their own product group. Monitor it for two days and adjust bids upwards if you need to make your ads more prominent. Also review absolute top impression share by device at the ad group level. You can optimize an underperforming device audience by increasing the bid modifier. Ad quality is the other factor in growing your absolute top impression share; include high quality images, relevant product titles, and the correct GTINs across your inventory to improve the quality.

To monitor your impact in key categories, you also can combine absolute top impression share with other competitive metrics such as click share. By increasing both metrics, you’re claiming more of shoppers’ attention.

The diagnostics report and absolute top impression share are available starting today in the new Adwords experience2.

To learn more about how to use absolute top impression share and other metrics to prepare for the holidays, visit our Help Center.

The right ad rotation can help you show your best ads to people looking for what you have to offer. However, it’s not always clear which rotation makes the most sense for your business. That’s why, starting in late September, we’re simplifying ad rotation to two settings: “optimize” and “rotate indefinitely.”

Optimize for your best ads

Powered by Google’s machine learning technology, the new “optimize” setting prioritizes ads that are expected to perform better than other ads within an ad group. This setting will optimize your ads for clicks in each individual auction using signals like keyword, search term, device, location and more.

Keep in mind that using an optimized ad rotation with three or more ads per ad group can increase both clicks and impressions. The more of your ads our system can choose from, the better the expected ad performance.

If you'd like to prioritize conversions, the best way is to use Smart Bidding. Smart Bidding helps you tailor your bids based on the likelihood of a conversion, and will choose the ad most likely to drive that conversion. Note that if you’re using Smart Bidding, AdWords will automatically use the “optimize” ad rotation.

Simplifying even rotation

While an optimized ad rotation works best for most advertisers, we know that some of you prefer more control with an even rotation. Because the “rotate indefinitely” setting is already the easiest way to give your ads equal preference, it will be the sole option for an even rotation going forward.

And to give you even more control, ad rotation settings will be available at the ad group level–meaning that you can use multiple rotation settings across a single campaign. Learn more about ad rotation in the AdWords Help Center, and read our best practices guide to find out which rotation setting is right for you.